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Wednesday 14 May 2008

Vatican't

Today, the news rang out that the Vatican officially recognises the possibility of extraterrestrial life. I caught this news from the BBC, wongaBlog and Unscrewing the Inscrutable. As I search for the topic in my RSS feed, I find that Way of the Woo and Pharyngula now also carry commentary on the matter.

Now, one of the arguments you sometimes hear from the frothing lips of creationists is that dinosaurs never existed (fossils are there to test our faith), because it's nowhere mentioned in the Bible. Where, pray tell, does it mention extraterrestrial life? Nowhere that I've heard about. You'd think, if the Bible were the word of God, he might have mentioned somewhere that we weren't his only creation - his only world-building project.

I'd like to present you with an analogy which occurred to me, in thinking about the Vatican's latest madness. It's a desperate act taken to appear relevant to an increasingly outward-looking society; it's an aging dad trying to convince his kids he's still cool. "Look," he cries, as he gets to his feet to the dismay of his offspring. "I've still got it - the old moves are still sharp!" He proceeds to strut some abysmal approximation halfway between the rock & roll two-step of his youth and the moves he's seen his kids watch on MTV. Accordingly, his children react in the only way they can:

"Please, dad, you're embarrassing everyone."

2 comments:

Asclepius said...

As much as I hate most of what the catholic high command has done over the last millenia I really cant hold this against them. They've been faced with overwhelming evidence and have probably decided that if they admit there may be life 'out there' they wont have to talk about the life 'down here'. Diverting everyones attention whilst they formulate more ways to harvest souls.

Darkwinter said...

This is where they start looking at the evidence??